1. Field of the Invention
This application relates generally to computing architectures which may be used in conjunction with a graphical user interface, and more particularly to zooming graphical user interfaces.
2. Description of the Related Art
The available display screen area on a computer monitor has become increasingly inadequate in terms of the presentation of the variety of information and resources available to the user. In this regard, conventional computing systems have attempted to provide various solutions to address the problem of limited display screen area.
For example, windowing systems divide a screen into multiple tiled or overlapping display areas, resembling sheets of paper on a desktop, with one window in the foreground and others in the background. These windows remind the user that other information and control options are readily available to be brought to the foreground at the click of a mouse on an unobscured point in the window containing the desired material. However, such systems typically allow only a limited number of windows to be open and only the foreground window to be operable at any one time. In addition, information within a window that does not fit on the window's display screen area must be scrolled using an input device in order to access chosen information.
Another attempt to increase displayed information and control options is the use of hierarchical menuing through a sequence of display screens, offered to the user as a cascade of windows or a single designated screen area overwritten for each submenu. Typically, hierarchical menus rely upon information organized into decision trees. Abbreviating menuing options causes the menus to be less user friendly as menus do not always suggest sub-menu options. Further, cascaded windows introduce screen clutter and prevent the user from seeing all of the cascaded information simultaneously.
Zooming graphical user interfaces allow navigation into or out of the display screen, and can thus allow zooming graphical objects to be viewed from various perspectives at various levels of granularity. This provides the ability to variously view large numbers of objects at low resolution (e.g., by zooming away from them), or smaller numbers of objects at higher resolution (e.g., by zooming towards them). Thus, the user can review available resources from a broad perspective, and then focus with greater detail on particular resources.